‘Great timing,’ Richard said under his breath.
‘Whoever it is clearly wants to speak to you.’
‘To hell with it.’
‘Take it,’ I said, thinking maybe it was some update on Billy, and he needed to be on the other end of the line.
Richard fished into his bathrobe pocket, squinted at the screen, then answered the call.
‘Oh yeah, hi there,’ he said to whoever was on the other end. ‘I didn’t expect to hear from you until. I see. that was fast. right. and?. really?. just like that?. yeah, that makes sense. well then, there we are. that’s right. see you then. and yeah, I remember this address. and a very good morning to you too.’
He ended the call, his lips pursed in a near smile.
‘Good news?’ I asked.
‘Very good news.’
‘Tell me.’
Now the part-smile became a full smile.
‘The apartment is ours.’
Three
WE GOT OUT of bed again around midday. This was such new territory for me — the constant need to be making love, to have my love deep inside me. Yes, I remember, all those years ago with Eric, the way we were always falling into bed during those first heady months of our romance. This was coupled with the discovery of sex: the wide-eyed wonder at the pleasure of all that intimate friction, of bodies electric; the sheer animalistic abandon that accompanied the act itself. Even after this initial discovery period — heightened with that overwhelming feeling of being truly in love for the first time — there was still a desire that never abated. I cannot remember a night when we didn’t make love — and there was always this infectious delight in having each other day in, day out.
With Dan. well, the sex was just that. Sex. Pleasant. Reasonable. Semi-engaged, but never infused with the sort of passion that was ever transporting. I knew this from the outset — and accepted it as cosmic payback for losing the man I so adored. And then, when I got pregnant.
But I remember holding Ben for the first time after the delivery, and crying as I saw my son, and knowing immediately that, even if this child was not made in love, my love for him would be absolute, unconditional. Just as I felt the same way when Sally arrived two years later. So the passion I have for everything to do with Ben and Sally has always counterbalanced the lack of passion in the marriage.
Richard reported to me that his own marriage was even more sexually moribund than mine; that he and his wife only ‘coupled’ (her verb of choice, he told me) two or three times a year, and that he had essentially closed down that part of his life.
And then we came together. And.
I am not very experienced in the wider world of sex. Even Lucy was shocked to learn that Eric and Dan were the only two men I had ever slept with. She herself could count eight lovers ‘before, during and after my bad marriage. and the fact that I can count them all on less than two hands makes me think I really should have been having more sex with more men at that point when it wasn’t so damn hard to meet the sort of men you want to be having sex with, rather than the nightmares who only seem to be on offer to middle-aged women living in small Maine towns’.
I had to laugh when she told me this. Just as it also fueled a larger encroaching despair I’d had for years about the lukewarm physical life I had with Dan. Until he lost his job we made love at least three nights a week. Even if it was, at best, thermal and adequate, at least it was there. But when he lost his job, his libido also went south.
Making love with Richard was nothing less than revelatory. In the three, four times we had fallen into bed since arriving here yesterday evening, the profundity of the act itself — the way it so expressed the overpowering love we had just discovered and now shared — seemed only to augment and grow every time we were entwined together. Feeling him move inside me didn’t just trigger an eruption of sensuality so far beyond anything in my past experience; it was also so palpably intimate. What was even more extraordinary was the fact that this conjoining, this total fusion, was so immediate. From the very moment he first entered me.
‘I never want to leave this bed,’ I whispered as we clung to each other afterwards.
‘Well, we can stay here all day then.’
‘There is the little problem of all our things at our respective rooms back at the God-awful hotel. Sorry to raise this dreary practicality. but won’t they want us checked out of there by midday. which is kind of now? And my car is still there.’
‘Yes, that thought did cross my mind. But I use that place all the time and know all the duty managers there. So I’ll give one of them a call in a few minutes, and see if I can negotiate a late checkout. or even offer to tip one of the maids twenty bucks if she’ll pack up everything for us. Then we can run over there and pick everything up later this afternoon.’
‘A change of clothes and a hairbrush would be welcome. But this suite is a fortune. And we certainly don’t have to stay here tonight. In fact, we could—’
‘We’re staying here tonight,’ Richard said. ‘I’ve spent far too much of my life being cautious about money. And what has such frugality finally given me?’
‘Well, it’s given you the money to buy that apartment — and change your life.’
‘True — but I should have been really living before this weekend. I’ve gone nowhere, seen so very little. Haven’t been to a concert or a play in years.’
‘But you have been reading.’
‘The cheap escape route. It’s like what Voltaire said about marriage — it’s the only adventure available for the coward.’
‘But the fact that you can quote Voltaire—’
‘Big deal.’
‘Tell me another insurance man from Bath, Maine — or anywhere else for that matter — who can do that. Anyway, now that we’ll be here, in Boston, much of the time, there’s a great orchestra here. There are great museums, good theatres. We can do all that. And here’s another thing I was going to mention earlier — all right, I will probably use around two-thirds of my overdue vacation money from the hospital to help top up Ben and Sally’s college tuitions next year. But that will still leave me maybe seven or eight thousand dollars. Why don’t we go to Paris for six weeks on that?’
‘Paris,’ he said, mouthing the word as if it was almost proscribed; the reverie he’d never dared articulate. ‘You serious?’
‘Just last week, before you turned my life upside down in the most amazing way, I spent an evening at home, looking at short-term rentals in Paris. Traveling vicariously, so to speak. We could find a very nice studio in an area like the Marais for around five hundred dollars a week. Airfares — if we book well in advance — are around six hundred each. You can eat well and reasonably in Paris. And the studio will have a kitchen. so, yes, we could do a month and a half on seven thousand. I would negotiate with whatever hospital down here took me on to ensure that I’d either have six weeks’ unpaid leave sometime during the first year — or, better yet, to push back my starting date until after Paris. In fact, if the apartment renovations might not be finished until early February we could go to France right after Christmas. ’
‘Paris,’ he said again. ‘Six weeks in Paris. I never thought that possible.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Let’s do it then.’
I kissed him, then said:
‘Well, that was quite a difficult negotiation.’
He laughed.